With a crucial Premier League game at Swansea City just two days later, the Dutchman admits he has to rotate his squad for the trip to Bramall Lane.

Meulensteen made nine changes for the third round replay against Norwich earlier this month, and key players like Scott Parker and Dimitar Berbatov are expected to be left behind in London at the weekend.

He said: “Obviously we know what the importance is for both competitions. You can’t get away from the fact that these [cup] games are falling in between very important Barclays Premier League games, and it’s the same thing this weekend.

"We have to play at 1pm on Sunday and have to play Swansea away in the Premier League [on Tuesday] and there’s no other way around it than to utilise the squad the best that I can to make sure that it doesn’t affect either competition, because they’re both very important.

“We’re delighted we progressed with a good performance against Norwich City and we hope to do the same thing against Sheffield.

"The biggest challenge that I have is making sure that I’m going to have a good team over there at Sheffield United and making sure that we’ve got more than enough at Swansea as well."

Fernando Amorebieta is expected to miss out again through injury, but youngsters like Chris David, Moussa Dembele and Muamer Tankovic could all get another chance to impress after featuring against the Canaries.